Value Based Drafting

or Let The Revolution Begin!

Often times, I get asked "Why are you such a proponent of value based drafting?" This question is usually immediately followed by "What's wrong with the way I've always drafted; I've won several leagues using my strategy." Well, I'll take those comments one at a time, first addressing what's wrong with the strategies most fantasy football players use.

The cheat sheet user
The cheat sheet user is an owner who shows up on draft day with 1-5 fantasy football magazines, or even better he shows up with a compiled sheet that he made based on either his own predictions or on several magazines predictions combined. What's wrong with this? First of all, the main problem is that Joe FF Magazine Maker has no idea what scoring system you are using. If your scoring system gives 1 point per reception, running backs that catch a lot of passes will leap frog those that don't. In fact, magazine writers create a cheat sheet based on the most common scoring rules, and I've yet to find a league that doesn't have at least some small change that would make this way of ranking players at best harmful and at worst season ruining. The other problem with this is the inability to compare different positions later on in the draft. Often times a magazine will have a top 50 player ranking, but what happens to this after the 5th round? The middle rounds are where championships are won, and in the middle rounds it's most important to be able to compare the 22nd ranked running back to the 35th ranked wide receiver when it's time for you to pick. All in all, the cheat sheet user is a guy that will probably have a lot of fun throughout the season, but he lacks the competitive edge that will give him a 10-15% better draft enabling him to weather some of the storms (read injuries) that will arise throughout the season.

The Stud Running Back Theorist
Easily the most stubborn of all fantasy football owners, the stud running back theorist will start a draft intent on taking a running back in either the first two rounds, or at worst getting two running backs in the first three rounds. What's wrong with taking two running backs in the first three rounds? Absolutely nothing. The problem with this theory occurs when those two running backs don't represent the best value available at the time they were picked. The object of fantasy football is to outscore the team you are playing week to week. The stud running back theorist throws this logic out the door when they take these players regardless of who is left on the board. This theory can be summed up in an admittedly condescending sentence: Stud running back theory doesn't care how many points a fantasy player is going to score; it's much more important to have two good running backs all season even if that theory causes the owner to lose every week. It's always great to play with these guys as you can usually grab top tier wide receivers and quarterbacks while they are wasting their picks on a running back of a similar caliber you can grab a few rounds later.

The Gut Guy
The last drafting strategy we're going to look at before getting into VBD is the gut guy. This guy either forgot his cheat sheets, has a photographic memory, or is more knowledgeable about football than any person I've ever had the honor of meeting. Obviously there are several problems with this theory, the main one being that we don't have to evaluate raw unproven talent. Any guy who wants to take a few minutes can see what a player has done over the last couple of years. You can then take this into account with any major changes (new team, new coach, etc, see creating a cheat sheet) and get a pretty good guess as to what the player will do in the present year. Drafting in this manner is a great way to end up with players who did well on your team last year, players who have a lot of very current hype, or home town guys. This team always will look great immediately after the draft, but when the regular season rolls around these teams usually end up middle of the pack at best.

Well, that's three bad strategies, so let's talk about the smartest way to draft, Value Based Drafting, and the only way to guarantee that you will draft the best team available from your draft position.

Value Based Drafting is a theory that attempts to compare players of differing positions through the use of a common scoring factor. With every pick, an owner using this method is trying to take the player left on the draft board that represents the most value to his team.

The core of Value Based Drafting (VBD) is creating projections for every player that has a chance of being drafted in your league. Seem daunting? It does to me, but there are easier ways of doing this than sitting down with a pad of paper projecting out stats for the Jets #3 receiver. There are several places to find projections on the internet. If it's your first time to do projections (or you have a life) use these as your guide. Make some tweaks and viola, your own projections. Once these numbers are in an excel spreadsheet, you need to establish a formula that allows for a comparison to be made between positions. The simplest way for me to explain how this formula needs to work is to show an example:

RB Points Scored
Al: 200
Bob: 160
Carl: 155

WR Points Scored
Don: 250
Earl: 245
Frank: 240

Who should be chosen if all these players are available at your pick? Well, WR Don will score the most points during the fantasy season, but he's only projected to score 5 more points than WR Earl. RB Al on the other hand is only projected to score 200 points, but he's going to outscore the next closest RB (Bob) by 40 points. Imagine that this is just a two man draft, and these are the only players available, one RB and one WR must be drafted. The numbers represented were recieved using a crystal ball and are the exact point totals that each player will have at the end of the season. Owner 1 takes Al using the Value Based Drafting Theory because he represents the most value. Owner 2 takes Don because Don is going to score the most points in the upcoming season. Then Owner 1 misses on WR and takes Frank (he doesn't have the crystal ball). Owner 2 then completes the draft by taking Bob. At the end of the season the point totals show:

Owner 1: 440 points (Al 200, Frank 240)
Owner 2: 410 points (Bob 160, Don 250)

So despite the error made by Owner 1 he still beats Owner 2 because he took the player with the most value at his pick.

Now, to the formula.
The simplest formula is the last starter baseline. What you do is figure out how many people are going to start at each position. If you are in a 10 team league that starts 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, and 1 TE then you figure out what the 10th ranked QB, 20th ranked RB, 30th ranked WR, and 10th ranked TE will score. Then you subtract that number from all the players in the same category (RB number from RBs, etc.) This will give you a last starter baseline of 0. Everyone ahead of the last starter will have a positive value while all those below will have a negative value. Now, you have a way of comparing positions to each other. This is only the beginning for some as a lot of the formulas owners use require a PhD. in mathematics from MIT to understand. This simple formula, however, will put you ahead of 90% of the fantasy football players out there in terms of drafting. Enough to win most local leagues. If you want to really have all the bells and whistles with the complex formulas and you don't want to spend literally hundreds of hours developing a formula I recommend using The Coordinator.

That is VBD explained in the simplest terms. The new catch phrase in fantasy football however is Dynamic Value Based Drafting (dVBD). The differences between VBD and dVBD are discussed here.

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